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Negative SEO, How I Lost A Page 1 Site

by AustinDigital
14 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hey Warriors,

So recently as you know, the Penguin update had ocurred. I had a site that I was optimistic it would survive the update, and it certainly did... and with flying colors I might add! Well, during my celebration of actually GAINING ranks from the Penguin update I began to notice something very odd...

My site was jumping around quite a bit. Now, my SERPs for these keywords are extremely competitive, so I had just moved up quite a bit over a few black hat sites. Well it look likes someone got mad at this ocurring (i wrote a blog post about it here) and took the time to start negative SEOing me.

I would love your feedback on the situation, let me know what you would do in my situation, and if you've experienced this sort of thing.
#bad #dealt #hand #negative #personally #seo
  • Profile picture of the author boxoun
    Report it and start keeping track of the links just in case you get any notices.
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  • Profile picture of the author jpete
    Sorry to hear that! This is why SEO is changing to stop these things from occurring in the future..
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    • Profile picture of the author Top10SEO
      Hey Austin, I read your expanded post on TPL where you state the affected web site is only a few months old. You 'may' just be experiencing the Google 'Honeymoon' effect, where they put a relatively new web site on the first page for several weeks or a month or two, then push it back down in the SERP's to let it rise back up naturally.

      Since you're an optimist, why don't you think about it in those terms and continue to build out your site as you've been doing. A few dozen spammy links should not be enough to take down a truly content-rich web site that has been properly On-page and Off-page SEO'ed. On the other hand, ten or twenty thousand spammy links is another story, so if that happens then I’d escalate the contact with Google.

      Track your progress in the SERP’s to keep an eye on things, but it may just be the ‘Honeymoon’ is over for that site and it now needs to ‘earn’ its way back to the first page. Really, to have a web site on the first page of Google in a COMPETITIVE market for multiple competitive search phrases in such a short time period (a month or two) is a little unheard of anyway. Continue doing what you’re doing and good luck with trying to remove the spammy links.
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  • Profile picture of the author Greenfatman
    Sorry guys, but negative SEO doesn't exist anymore, if it did...Google is putting everything over the place, the only thing you have to do is wait and see, I mean, carry on doing what you have been done to scale your site.
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    • Profile picture of the author Fernando Veloso
      OP, get your ass straight to SEOCHAT and post this info there, include your post information. People will discuss this as it should, and try to guide you to possible safe answers, and/or make your problem public.

      Good luck.

      Originally Posted by Greenfatman View Post

      Sorry guys, but negative SEO doesn't exist anymore, if it did...Google is putting everything over the place, the only thing you have to do is wait and see, I mean, carry on doing what you have been done to scale your site.
      :rolleyes:

      Have you taken a couple minutes to read the damn article OP posted? Have you got any time to understand it's NOT just OP doing tests and watching this is a truth, a major problem and a huge change (unless Google revert it back asap)?

      Or are you just posting your not funded opinions cause this is a public forum?

      WTF... SEO and WF really don't combine together.
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    • Profile picture of the author akazzz
      Originally Posted by Greenfatman View Post

      Sorry guys, but negative SEO doesn't exist anymore, if it did...Google is putting everything over the place, the only thing you have to do is wait and see, I mean, carry on doing what you have been done to scale your site.
      NegativeSEO is as real as it gets...for now until Google change their algo.

      @OP: I would suggest updating and adding more quality content to your site. Do not do any offpage seo for the moment.
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      • Profile picture of the author guynextdoor
        Negative SEO, simply using exact match anchors is a fact since February.

        I have examples done with my own tests and sites... old and aged ones with pagerank...

        And for those which still don't believe it:

        CASE STUDY: Negative SEO - Results - Main Backlinks/SEO Discussion - Traffic Planet
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        • Profile picture of the author Architex
          Negative SEO absolutely works. Because if you are now going to get penalties from links then anyone can build links. The only way this will not be the case is if you have an authority site with excellent on page and off page SEO.

          I am tempted to crash a site that is #1 for one of my KW just to show it can be done. It is a site that has no business being #1 for this KW but it is there now with this recent update. It has a total of 35 back links and the on page is horrible. I really do not know why this site is #1. And no, I am not bitter since my site is now off the first page. I just do not get why some sites are ranking where they are right now. Of course I would never crash it since I would not want it done to me. But the science part of me wants to see if I could really nuke it.

          There is still some dancing going on though since my other site is bouncing from#8-9 to the depths of Neptune for one of my KW's. This site is 7 years old and has less content than my site that got nuked. But it's back links are cleaner. I wonder if this update also targeted more non-traditional sites verses sites for off line businesses.
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  • Profile picture of the author sackboy127
    I think whenever negative SEO is working, it's just a temporary bug in the algorithm, and Google will patch it sooner or later. Just wait it out, and don't stop building quality links!
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  • Profile picture of the author sovereignn
    You're supposed to be able to report things like this in Google webmaster tools

    I doubt they'd do anything about it though
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  • Profile picture of the author marketwarrior06
    Banned
    As your site is new so it can happen. Remember that Negative SEO only works in case of new sites.
    Because think the age old domains are always. In this case you have nothing to do. Because by complaining nothing will happen.
    thanks
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  • Profile picture of the author Stephanie1
    That's a horrible thing to happen! I wasn't aware that someone could do that.
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    • Profile picture of the author FredJones
      Originally Posted by Greenfatman View Post

      Sorry guys, but negative SEO doesn't exist anymore, if it did...Google is putting everything over the place, the only thing you have to do is wait and see, I mean, carry on doing what you have been done to scale your site.
      Did you Google for a few minutes? There've been experiments showing it. By the way, the -50 etc penalties had also existed before this update, they have been always around. It's just that this update seems to have reduced the spam threshold triggger and also somehow or the other this came into limelight. It's got easier to do negative SEO these days - that's the only change.

      Originally Posted by Fernando Veloso View Post

      Have you taken a couple minutes to read the damn article OP posted? Have you got any time to understand it's NOT just OP doing tests and watching this is a truth, a major problem and a huge change (unless Google revert it back asap)?
      Fernando, you and I have agreed on a number of topics before, and looks like the case is the same here also. I agree with your opinion here, mate.

      Originally Posted by miscbrah View Post

      Hey Warriors,

      So recently as you know, the Penguin update had ocurred. I had a site that I was optimistic it would survive the update, and it certainly did... and with flying colors I might add! Well, during my celebration of actually GAINING ranks from the Penguin update I began to notice something very odd...

      My site was jumping around quite a bit. Now, my SERPs for these keywords are extremely competitive, so I had just moved up quite a bit over a few black hat sites. Well it look likes someone got mad at this ocurring (i wrote a blog post about it here) and took the time to start negative SEOing me.

      I would love your feedback on the situation, let me know what you would do in my situation, and if you've experienced this sort of thing.
      Sorry to hear this @ OP. But what made you think that there's been negative SEO on your site? By the way, when did the rankings fall? After the 24th April update, there've been major changes to some part of the rankings. Google says 3% - I don't know what percent - but there's a clear change in rankings of many people. I hope you made sure that was not the reason of the change of your SERP rankings?
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